Camera Bits has posted the first public beta of the next release of its pro photo browser Photo Mechanic. Version 4.6.8 public beta 1 for Mac corrects incompatibilities introduced by Mac OS X Lion, adds support for RAW files captured with the the Olympus E-PL2, Panasonic DMC-GF2 and DMC-GH2 and fixes a handful of minor bugs. A Windows public beta release is to follow shortly.

We are pleased to announce the first public beta version of Photo Mechanic 4.6.8. This new version addresses issues discovered after the release of Photo Mechanic 4.6.7, but primarily it is for Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) compatibility.

There are two versions. One is for Mac OS X 10.6 and 10.7 users. The other is what we call a 'Legacy' version targeted towards Mac OS X 10.4.11 through 10.5.8 users. Please download the version appropriate for your OS version. If you download the wrong version and try to use it, the application will put up a warning dialog and quit. You'll have to get the version for your system and use it instead.

Download the version for Mac OS X 10.6+ users here.
Download the version for Mac OS X 10.4.11 through 10.5.8 users here.

Windows users will also get a 4.6.8 version soon.

Version Information

Version 4.6.8
* (Mac) Updated the slideshow and live slideshow to work with Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion). Computers still running Mac OS X 10.4.11 (Tiger) through 10.5.8 (Leopard) will need a special build that uses the old slideshow.
* Added support for RAW ORF files from the Olympus E-PL2, DMC-GF2, and DMC-GH2.
* Fixed {frame} and {frame4} variables for JPEG and NEF files saved from Capture NX2.
* When uploading, the original cached upload images are deleted when their image processing is complete. Upload images are also deleted if the upload is terminated.
* (Win) Autoplay will now launch Photo Mechanic and if configured to ingest, PM will display the ingest dialog.
* Fixed an issue with Ingest where the {seqn} value would be incremented when using a local IPTC Stationery Pad that didn't contain the {seqn} variable (but the global IPTC Stationery Pad did).
* The {seqn} value is only incremented by one when saving from Preview window.
* Fixed an issue that would cause improperly formatted but otherwise valid GPS coordinates to be discarded.
* Fixed an issue with expanding extremely large {variable} lookups.
* (Mac) Fixed an issue in the Preview window that would cause the user's choice of layout to be disregarded.
* (Mac) Fixed an issue with launching classic (Rosetta) Photoshop droplets.
* PEF files now treated properly as TIFF-based RAW.